a sterling bounty [Oriel, AU]

[Erik Stewart]

Erik always knew when he found his target. It was a ways away, and he heard nothing except for the whistle of the bullet cut short. He was grateful; silver bullets were expensive. Oddly enough, it was the first thing he thought of when he realised he’d got a hit on Oriel, somehow, somewhere. Thank God. I can only get these in dozens, was his initial train of thought.

Mandy, his German Shepherd, knew bloodsuckers’ blood when she smelled it, and burst forward to chase down the vampire wherever it lay. Erik followed, saying, “go get ‘im, girl,”; he noted by the sporadic trail that the vampire was likely still alive. Dots of blood was not as promising as, say, a drying stream. Reload, then. Better not to let it catch him off guard.

Oriel would see the dog’s nose edge around the corner first, followed by another flurry of braying. He’d see her ears and tail erect in a brief moment of accomplishment, before it flattened against her head, hackles raised, fangs bared. Snarls peeled out from her throat.

“I reckon one last bullet’d do it,” Erik said.

[Deleted]

Fuck. This just wasn’t his night, was it? Can’t a vampire stalk around at night without getting shot at anymore? What’s worse, is that the shooter was none other than Erik, a hunter and rival he’d fought against many times.

Oriel wasn’t invincible. He’d gotten hurt in fights before. Silver bullets hurt like a bitch, though, and Erik was easily the best shot he’d seen in a century or so. As soon as that little silver marble plunged into his leg, Oriel dropped like a fly. For a moment, his long suppressed feral side emerged. He bared his fangs, growled, and screeched like the demon he was, grasping and clawing at the burning deep within his leg. It took a mad moment to regain some of his senses, and Oriel limped off through the alleys, faster human could move with or without an injury, but much, much slower than any healthy vampire.

He could smell the dog on the wind. Oriel fucking hated dogs. Always had. Mandy would find Oriel leaning against one brick wall of an alley, several twists and turns from where he left his master. Oriel bared his fangs back at the canine like a cornered animal with nothing left to lose. If he was going down, then maybe he could take the dog with him?

No….Oriel couldn’t afford to perish here…but it looked like that was going to happen regardless. Oriel glared up at the hunter, panting for breath he hadn’t needed for centuries. He was crippled on the ground. “I reckon,” he growled. Oriel winced as another jolt of pain radiated out from his leg. When it calmed, he spoke again. “You….take last requests?” Couldn’t know if you didn’t ask.

[Erik Stewart]

Never engage. That was his pop’s prime advice to him. If they talked, don’t listen, just shoot ‘em in the face. Those bloodsuckers were tricky bastards and they’d beguile you into any number of things.

Of course Erik remembered that as he looked down the sights of his silver-bullet revolver. He didn’t know why on earth he’d respond. Erik wasn’t much the gloating type, unlike some of his kin, and nothing particularly enlightening had ever come from Oriel’s mouth before. Still, as Mandy snarled and snapped at him, he found himself hesitating. They’d been fighting for so long, it almost seemed a shame to deal him a fatal shot with so little fanfare. “Down, girl,” he said. Mandy raised her head and licked her muzzle in mild befuddlement, but did as he said, flattening her hackles.

He could almost hear his pop’s indignant ranting.

“Nope,” he responded, finally. His fingers shifted on the trigger. “I just wanted t’know what y’think I should do with th’ twenty grand your head’s worth. I was thinkin’ a big ol’ condo in Na’ Orleans. Or might be I could get some stereo sets. Big ones.”

[Deleted]

“Well, that stinks.” Oriel chuckled kind of helplessly. Guess Phoenix wasn’t going to get the news that he finally kicked it. That made him sad, of course, but he’d never show it. Not to Erik, not even in his final moments.

It really was a shame, though, that it had to end this way. Oriel didn’t dislike the guy. He was fun to play with, a great way to challenge himself. He’d messed up tonight, though. Wasn’t paying attention and Erik took advantage, just as he should have. Oriel didn’t mind that it was Erik either, though he too wished the exchange had been a little more satisfying. He was surprised that Erik hadn’t taken his final shot already, and even called down his dog. Jerk. How dare he drag this out. Oriel smirked in his own pathetic amusement.

“Stereo…..you’d probably just break ‘em ‘fore you get their money’s worth.” Oriel wasn’t a big fan of material things. As a being who supposedly lived forever, a place to return to was far more important than silly items that wore out after a couple decades if you were lucky. Oriel winced at a sudden shooting pain up his leg. He cringed, digging his fingers into his thigh until it subsided enough to go on. “Condo sounds nice, though,” he offered, his voice strained. He chuckled again. “I’d say you could decorate with my head on the mantle, but….won’t be much left of me once I kick it. Going to have to find something else to be your trophy. Unfortunately.”

[Erik Stewart]

Oriel wasn’t that far off. A lot of hunters took trophies. His own pop took their teeth and put them in a little unassuming box on the mantelpiece, one from each vampire, because you needed the other to prove the corpse was, in fact, a dead bloodsucker. Others might take their belongings. It was a habit they shared with serial killers, and incidentally most weren’t too proud of it. Erik had never heard of a hunter so bold as to mount and stuff their bounties but it was joked about.

Erik grimaced. “Like I’d want t’look at yer ugly face all th’ time.”

For a brief second, his mind flashed towards that fancy condo on the waterfront.

Hunters were raised to believe that vampires were monsters, or else they’d stumbled upon the philosophy at some point in their lives and stuck to it. Erik had been the former. Whatever humanity vampires had possessed had been stripped from them. They were walking, vacant corpses; the Devil had taken hold of them now and it was his voice that spoke through them. Eradication was simply God’s will. The heavy silver crosses hunters wore around their necks were symbols, reminders, more than anything; the shape of a cross was really no more deadly to a vampire than garlic was.

He could feel it now, resting between his collarbones. “It’s nothin’ personal. Y’know that, right?” he said. “May God have mercy on your soul, if it’s still knockin’ ‘bout in there.”

[Deleted]

“Ha ha, ouch,” Oriel said with a strained smile. “And here…I take pride in my looks.” He had to be careful with it, though. Because he was a vampire and essentially already dead, things like hair growth didn’t exactly happen quickly. That was probably his biggest trial in maintaining his image. But I digress…

“Well…what do you want for that trophy?” he asked. Oriel was just curious to know what Erik preferred. Though it wasn’t going to matter once he was gone.

Once he was gone….damn, Oriel didn’t have a lot of time to come to terms with this. He thought that as a everliving being, he would have been at peace with the fact that he might be killed one day. That it was for the best. Because he was an abnormal beast. Which was fine with him. After all, who wanted to live forever?

Maybe just one day more….? It was always just one day more…

“Heh…mercy. Fuck mercy, that’s a human concept, and God won’t have it for the likes of me.” Oriel closed his eyes as he ‘breathed’ through another spike of pain. “I know….you’re a good guy, Erik. What you do is…it’s good.” Oriel never thought it wasn’t. There were more wild and dangerous vampires out there than Oriel…the kind that were a real threat to humans. Oriel opened his eyes and kept them on Erik. He wanted to be looking him in the eye when the hunter finally pulled the trigger. “Keep it up.”

[Erik Stewart]

Erik knew well the dangers of a vampire’s word. There was a reason you shouldn’t engage your prey in conversation: some of the older ones knew how to seduce and guile, who could influence a mind, hypnotize. He wondered if that was happening right now. Surely these couldn’t be his thoughts he was thinking.

“Ya got ID?” he said.

He’d let Oriel work through that himself. It was likely not what Oriel was thinking: luckily for him, Erik and his fellow hunters weren’t driven to keep the peace, nor even by the will of God, but for the love of wealth and prestige. At least, that was what Erik had been taught, and adopted. He didn’t respond to Oriel’s “praise” - if it could be called that - as taciturn as ever.

Using his thumb to cock the gun so it clicked, he lifted it pointedly at the vampire’s face. “Well, do you?”

[Deleted]

If Oriel wanted to enchant Erik away, he’d have done so already. Actually, if he wanted to enchant at all, he would have been in his pants already. That was really the only reason why Oriel used his vampire seducing powers, to get a body in bed and drink from them for a night. Then leave them by morning with nothing but a beautiful dream in their confuzzled mind. Oh, yeah, and the faintest evidence of a ‘love bite’ on their necks.

“W…what?” Oriel said with an expression most confused. Erik wanted his ID? Did he want his wallet too? Was Oriel being mugged now?

Well, maybe Erik wasn’t as good as he thought he was, but either way and regardless of the reason why he was a hunter, the fact still remained that someone needed to keep their numbers down, especially those of the manic, violent kind.

Oriel snorted, scowling slightly and reached behind him to pull his wallet from his pocket. There was a chain on it which was hooked around his belt. Moving in the crazy ways he did sometimes, and at the speeds he did, he had to make sure it wouldn’t fall out on accident, right? “You want my credit cards too?” he asked snarkily, pulling out his driver’s license and holding it between two fingers out towards his…mugger? “Maybe you should just take the whole fucking wallet?” Oriel was prepared to see a bullet coming at him any second now…but now he was curious. Figures.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik grimaced at the insinuation. “If I was after your credit cards I could’ve pried ‘em off your dead body, I assure you,” he said, plucking the ID off Oriel’s fingers. He turned it over, glancing at its back. IDs really weren’t a common form of identification when it came to vampires; so many of them didn’t have them, as many refused to assimilate into modern human culture. The few that did were the manipulators, the planners, the orchestrators. They had property and estates and fake IDs, like this one, right down to the fake birthdays and, sometimes, fake names. “Organ donor?” Erik asked, looking at the little red heart on the lower corner. He grinned briefly. “They’re gonna be waitin’ a long time for those, don’t y’think?”

He straightened up then, and sighed. “I’m takin’ this as proof that you’re dead. So don’t come back here. It’ll be awkward for us both,” he said. “An’ I really will shoot ya then.”

Mandy, still waving her tail, watched Oriel intently. She restlessly licked her chops, growling low in her throat whenever he moved so much as an inch. When Erik whistled and called her back with a “c’mere, killer,” she turned her ears towards him and let out a whine. It was a good thing, too. She was starting to drool.

[Deleted]

If he said so, but Oriel didn’t know too many hunters asking vampires for their IDs, so of course he was a little suspicious. Well…this would at least be an interesting story to tell….to someone. Maybe Phoenix. Maybe that kid at the bookstore, what was his name? Oriel smirked as Erik looked over the information. “I’m also an avid supporter of the Make A Wish Foundation,” he offered. Useless information, but he had to have a cover in some ways or more. People got suspicious of those who went out of their way to not exist. They’d come around and start asking questions. If they were going to do that, Oriel may as well give them a nice picture to look at.

At Erik’s announcement….Oriel couldn’t hide his shock. He….was letting him go? A hunter, one as ruthless as Erik, was letting Oriel the ‘notorious’ vampire go free? He couldn’t even laugh in his usual twisted amusement. “….thanks,” he said uncertainly. “I think…..what’s the catch?” Aside from making himself scarce in these parts. Oriel narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the hunter. “I mean, there’s got to be something else you’re going for, right?” Oriel couldn’t help being skeptical, even with the dog called off, considering how long Erik had been trying to kill him.